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How to Create Blog Content That Rewards Your Business Forever

Easton Ellsworth — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:32:56 +0000

Warning: You’re losing customers and fans right now because your blog content isn’t converting as well as it should.

Here’s a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to make, publish and market blog content that will convert more visitors into buyers and brand promoters.

Why is the Blog Content Creation Process So Important?

Great blog content – the words, pictures, sounds and videos that you present to your blog visitors – makes your business or organization more successful in at least the following ways:

It impels your target audience to buy from you and to recommend your business to others.
It provides search engines with a fresh batch of original stuff for their spiders to feed on, which means that more people will find your blog in search results.
It establishes your brand more strongly.
It helps you develop relationships of trust with people. After all, you do business with people, not businesses.
It leverages the emerging social Web. Because it’s on a blog and not in a white paper or press release, it invites immediate personal feedback and shows people you’re approachable and willing to listen.

In short, successful blog content rewards you and your business forever.

So you’ve got to know how to create it the right way.

How to Make Sure Your Content Creation Efforts Are Not a Waste of Time

Truly successful blog content is worth the effort.

So worth the effort.

Example: The Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox baseball team failed to win a World Series between 1918 and 2004. Between those two championship seasons, 85 long summers came and went, the world’s population more than tripled, and generations of Red Sox fans lived and died in the fruitless pursuit of glory.

When the Sox finally triumphed in 2004, heart-sickening failure gave way to immensely satisfying success. Their astonishing run through the playoffs, which included a heart-stopping comeback against their hated rivals, the New York Yankees, and a merciless sweep of the mighty St. Louis Cardinals, will reward them and their fans forever.

Who can deny that that seemingly endless effort wasn’t worth it?

Yes, But …

You don’t have 86 years to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail before succeeding.

You want your business to succeed, and you want your blog to grow fast now.

So without forgetting the elation, the celebration and the downright sweetness of pure victory, let’s talk about some ways to accelerate your path to blogging success (and, therefore, professional success).

Step 1: Steel Yourself Against Your Fears

Before you dive right into making fabulous content that knocks people’s sox – er, socks off and propels your business forward indefinitely, stop.

Stop and stare at your fears.

Because if you don’t steel yourself against them right now, this journey might just take you 86 years and then some.

Ask Yourself:

What makes me feel fear? When am I most afraid?
How do my fears cause me to feel? What do they make me do or avoid doing?
How does my blog and/or my business suffer because of my inability to face my fears?
What would I like most to change about those situations which bring my fears to the forefront?
What would I like most to change about my response to my fears?

As you answer each question, think about the types of fear you may be experiencing. The four fear types generally run in descending order of urgency – while all are important to address, you should probably prioritize your attention as follows:

Fear of physical pain that you may suffer due to lack of shelter, food, protection, clothing or money.
Fear of mental or emotional distress that you may feel.
Fear of physical pain that others may suffer.
Fear of mental or emotional distress that others may feel.

Studying your fear is like shining a bright light in a dark room. Everything becomes clearer, and things that once seemed menacing often turn out to nothing but shadows. And even the really scary stuff becomes easier to face, because you can discern its shape, its color, its direction. You can finally look fear in the eye and prepare to fight it.

Step 2: Choose a Purpose for Your Blog Content that Aligns Well With Your Professional Goals

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” – Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” – Cheshire Cat
“I don’t much care where …” – Alice
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” – Cheshire Cat

Most businesses or organizations are trying to do one of two things, or both:

Make money.
Make a difference in the world.

So what’s your blog going to be for?

You have to know that now. You have to decide why you’re doing it in the first place. You have to know why you’re going with a blog instead of some other format for presentation and delivery of your content. And you have to know what you hope to accomplish in the end.

What’s the Point?

Do you always ask that question about every aspect of your Web marketing?

In other words, “Why am I doing this instead of not doing it? Why this and not something else? What is it about this activity that is meant to lead my business to success as quickly and efficiently as possible?”

If you can’t honestly think of a point to each marketing effort that clearly addresses your long-term success, should you really keep doing that thing?

What’s the point of what you just spent the last minute/hour/day/week/month/year doing on the Web to promote your business/product/service/event/cause?

If you don’t really know, then there’s not much point, is there?

Always Know Why You’re Doing a Blog in The First Place

With a strong purpose in place as your foundation, you are prepared to build the framework of your blog’s content on top of it.

For example, let’s say you’re the new media director for a global non-profit organization. You want your organization to have a powerful blog that motivates visitors to donate to your cause and spread awareness of the issues you’re passionate about.

Or let’s say you’re an independent business owner who wants to make a living by selling real estate. Perhaps the purpose of your blog could be to provide a way for people in your local area to discover you, come to trust you and eventually do business with you.

Whatever purpose you choose for your blog, make sure it passes this simple test:

If you remove it, your business or organization will have a significantly harder time achieving maximum success.

If you can’t honestly say that about your blog, scrap it. Unless:

You haven’t started the blog yet, or you have just started it (say, less than 90 days ago).
You can afford to waste time and money. (If so, I’d love to know what you’re doing all day!)

Step 3: Identify a Target Audience for Your Blog Content by Considering Your Blog’s Purpose and Goals

With a purpose and topic in mind for your blog, you should be able to decide who your blog is for.

Try to imagine the perfect visitor to your blog. What is she like? What does she want that your blog can give her? What problems does she have that you can solve through your blog?

For example, if your blog’s purpose is to help you sell ear plugs and your topic is going to be how awesome your custom made ear plugs are, then perhaps your ideal audience is a person who works at a busy airport or in a loud machine shop or at a shooting range. Maybe that person suffers from hearing loss or headaches because of their loud environment and they want to know where they can find good ear plugs that fit their ears just right and keep all the noise out.

Who’s the Target Visitor?

Who your blog matters more than what your blog. It’s bigger than when or where or how, too.

Knowing why you’re blogging and who you’re blogging for is more fundamental than deciding anything else about your blog, including what to blog about.

When you’re birthing a blog, the why and who are the head and shoulders. After those emerge, the what and how come out quickly. (Unless it’s breech …)

A Bunch of Ways to Figure Out Who On Earth Your Blog Should Be For

Observe carefully. Pay close attention to details. Pay extra close attention to the blogs and people whose examples you want to follow. Hang onto their every pixel and word.
Experiment. The only way to know if a seed will grow into a tree is to plant it. If it grows, it’s a good seed. If not, either it’s a bad seed or its growing conditions are too poor. Similarly, you should have the courage to try things out on your blog and in your blogging routine. If they work, keep doing them. If they don’t, stop and consider changing your approach or replacing your idea.
Imagine the future. Think of the possibilities and probabilities involved. Should your blog become a company? Depends in part on how many gray hairs or wrinkles you think that would give you.
Remember the past. What to write about? Well, what worked before? That’s one good approach.
Think about needs. For instance, what does your blog’s target audience need?
Gather things together. It’s much easier to compare, say, possible blog niches if you’ve assembled a list of them in one spot.
Narrow your field. Of vision, that is. Limit the options to make the right choice easier to discern. For example, instead of wondering which of a billion post ideas is best right now, you could force yourself to choose from among just three.
Ask for help. Maybe someone in your blog audience, in your email contact list or in your apartment building has a better sense of discernment on a particular matter than you do. Maybe they’ve got access to a light source that you don’t. Or maybe they’re just positioned at a better angle.
Write everything down. Well, not everything. But if you’re stuck in the discernment process, having a written collection of thoughts can help you begin to get clarity.
Refresh your focus. Sometimes you lack discernment because you’re distracted.

Got all that?

Now you know your purpose and your audience.

All that’s left is for you to satisfy your audience over and over.

Step 4: Decide on a Theme for Your Blog Content that Fulfills Your Blogging and Organizational Purpose by Attracting and Satisfying Your Target Audience

What? It’s a broken tulip in soda.

Anyway, once you have decided on a purpose and an audience for your blog, it’s time to choose a theme that will help you fulfill that purpose.

For example:

If your blog’s purpose is to help your company make money, pick a main topic that people think about often when looking online for information that can help them make a purchasing decision that is related to what you’re selling.
If your blog’s purpose is to help your organization enlist supporters, pick a main topic that people who fit the description of your ideal supporter would respond favorably to – something they would say “Amen” to and want to join your cause because of having read, seen or listened to via your blog.

What about multiple themes?

In general, it is best for your blog to have one central theme or topic. You should have a single, specific audience in mind. But of course there may be valuable and important sub-topics to cover that can help you achieve your blogging and business goals.

Step 5: Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content … and Oh Yes Make More Content

run, rabbit, run
dig that hole, forget the sun
- Pink Floyd

Well, now comes the easy part.

Hard, hard, hard work.

But seriously – if you already know why you’re blogging and for whom, and what you’re supposed to blog about, and you’ve faced your blogging fears … what else is there to wonder about? Just start creating.

Okay, so this really is the toughest part of all.

To help you with that, here are 17 tips on how to get creative with your blog content:

Approve. It’s okay. Go ahead. Give yourself permission. Nobody’s watching. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself.
Exercise. Take a few minutes each day or each week to do nothing but imagine stuff. No imaginary pain, no imaginary gain.
Write it down. Take notes as you daydream or imagine things. Wait until your imagination time ends if you’re concerned about breaking its flow. But once you’re done, write down what you’ve learned or experienced or thought.
Start with anything. Picture your blog if you like. Or picture a blue barracuda named Bob. It matters less where you begin than where you go.
Change something. So there’s Bob the barracuda in your brain. Now change something about him. Poof! His name’s Shirley. Poof! Give him legs. Poof! Red legs.
“What if …?” Ask yourself how the outcome may change if you change the input. Be merciless with the input, sensible with the output. “What if I posted once every 10 minutes to my blog for an entire week? My brain might turn to alfalfa, but I sure would get attention from the other bloggers in my niche. Maybe there’s a viral idea in there … how can I prevent the alfalfa and still get the attention? Aha! What if I just did this for one day? And all around a central theme? And invited others to do it too?”
Be silly. You’d be surprised at how many serious, useful ideas are born of ridiculous, useless parents. I say useless because so-called “crazy ideas” may not serve any real purpose by themselves – but they may become powerful means to coming up with totally sane concepts. So maybe Bob the barracuda’s image flashes in your mind, and you give him a bowtie and have him speak Hungarian backwards … and then you realize that the pattern on the bowtie would make a perfect logo for your blog, and that a single backwards word would make a brilliant catchphrase to go in your next post headline.
Go sideways. You think and act in well-worn paths all the time. When you practice honing your imagination, make sure to spend some time not forsaking those paths altogether, but rather following them for a while and then taking a brief detour. So if your habit is to answer every thoughtful comment left at your blog with a heartfelt expression of thanks, perhaps you might tweak (but not completely redo) your approach so that you always try to end with a follow-up question inviting further discussion.
Consider opposites. Let’s say your blog’s color scheme is dark on light. Without stopping to question your logic, just imagine the absolute photo negative opposite – a light on dark scheme. Allow both extremes to stand before you. Ponder their differences. What do you observe that can be applied whether or not you make a complete shift from the light scheme to its polar opposite?
Tell a story. Make it up as you go. It can be set in the past, present or future. “It’s tomorrow morning. I’m reading a bunch of new blog posts on how to increase my RSS subscriber numbers when there’s a knock at the door. It’s my favorite blogger! We’ve never met before, and it’s great to say hi in person. We sit down together and form a plan to play a practical joke on 100 other bloggers – the most audacious such plan ever concoted.” Etc. The point of this exercise is to evoke feelings or thoughts in passing that you can then latch on to and do something about.
Drink from imaginative fountains. Go to a creative blogger and ask them for inspiration. Talk to just about any eight-year-old. Watch a movie with lots of surprises in it. Just chug lots of IJ (imagination juice) and see what color your pee turns. In other words, you are what you drink. So partake of as much creative content and conversation as possible.
Mix things together. Bob the barracuda and your first blog post. The aftertaste of strawberries and the smell of whipped cream. Put any two or more things together and see what happens.
Consider iterations. Ask yourself what the next logical step in a progression should be. Fetus, baby, child, adolescent, adult, worm food. So after you put out that huge resource list post to charm the legions of social media fans, then what? Then you’ll probably get a lot of first-time visitors to your blog. So how can you prepare for that influx? What needs to change about your design, your content and your community? After the social media traffic spikes come and go, then what? Etc.
Apply everything. Try to always glean a meaningful lesson from your escapades to the land of enchantment and imagination (or whatever you wish to call it). And apply each lesson or insight like mad to your blog and to your blogging activities.
Share with someone. There are so many more ways to improve your imagination. Let someone else hear some of your mental rumblings. Imagination, when shared, becomes almost frighteningly powerful.
Caveat: Imagination isn’t everything. It’s wonderful, but it’s still all in your head. You have to do real work to make the internal become external. But hard work can make imagination pay off like – well, I guess you can imagine.
Caveat: Imagination can be scary. Especially when you let it run wild. Don’t let fear of the unknown paralyze you. You can control it. You can be its master. Remember what Mark Twain said: “Some of the worst things in my life never happened.” Remember what we said about fears at the start of this guide.

How Do You Delight Your Blog Audience?

The way to really please your blog’s audience is to create content that does at least one of the following:

Answers their questions.
Solves their problems.
Scratches their itches.
Soothes their fears.

Think about what combinations of text, images, sounds and/or videos would most successfully quench the different desires that your intended audience may have.

For example, if your blog topic is the latest news about U.S. President Barack Obama’s dog, you could:

Share a video of the dog playing fetch.
Show some photos of the dog and President Obama.
Share an audio recording of the dog attempting to bite Rush Limbaugh.
Write some tips on how to care for a dog of the same breed.

The blog post ideas above could:

Answer the question of what on earth is going on with that dog anyhow.
Solve the problem of not knowing much about the president’s dog.
Scratch the itch of wanting to feel in touch with politics or animal kingdom news (or both).
Soothe the fear that perhaps the President isn’t having fun with his dog or that the dog is sick, etc.

As long as you keep giving your audience members what they want, they will do two wonderful things:

They will keep coming back, forever and ever.
They will keep inviting others to come to you, forever and ever.

See how great blog content rewards your business forever (and ever)?

Step 6: Improve Your Blog Content Endlessly

After you’ve boldly set forth to delight a specific audience with blog content that fulfills a specific purpose for your business, the final step in this creation process is to continually strive to create better and better stuff.

To help you do just that, I recommend the following action steps:

Listen. Stop talking. Be still. Observe. Pay attention. Seek awareness before anything else. Listening enables deep conversation – the kind that builds relationships of trust. And trust is the single most valuable thing you can cultivate through your professional blog. A blog works best when it listens more than it talks.
Learn. Never stop learning. Learn what your blog visitors want. Learn what tools work best. Learn what content strikes the most pleasant chords. Learn what else you can do to improve your blog. Learn from every interation, every conversation, every meditation, every setback.
Lose. Stop trying so hard to win. Lose your pride. Lose your fear. Lose your doubt. Lose yourself in the service of your blog readers. You will win more customers and fans this way than by any other approach.

Not specific enough for you? Here are 23 specific aspects of your blog content that you can, and should, strive to constantly improve:

Number of published articles (posts + pages)
Posts published per month
Words per article
Images/audio/videos per article
Internal links per article
External links per article
Compelling headlines
Descriptive headlines
Concise headlines
Appropriate writing style
Useful content
Remarkable content
Targeted content
Accurate content
Unique content
Viral content
Effective use of multiple media formats
Appropriate anchor text in hyperlinks
Appropriate number of hyperlinks
Relevant hyperlinks
Descriptive use of categories/tags
Concise use of categories/tags
Relevant use of categories/tags

Your Homework, Should You Choose To Accept It

Is to get out a piece of paper and write the following on it, in as much gory detail as possible:

Why you started your blog, what you ultimate hope to achieve with it and how it relates to your overall business goals.
Who your blog is for.
What your blog will be about.
What you plan to create over the next 30 days for publication at your blog.
How you plan to improve your new and existing blog content over the next 30 days.

Feel free to share your ideas and plans with me. I’d love to help you out.

Review: What We’ve Covered in This Guide to Blog Content Creation

We just spent close to 4,000 words going through the following points:

You must strive to create blog content that will reap dividends for your business/organization continually, specially in terms of revenue, marketing and branding.
You must steel yourself against your blogging (and business) fears in order to be prepared to create that content.
You must establish a clear purpose for your blog that makes sense, given your business goals.
You must establish clearly who your blog’s target audience is, given its purpose.
You must establish a clear theme for your blog that will enable you to produce lots of successful content, given your blog’s purpose and audience.
You must continually churn out blog content that matches your chosen purpose, audience and theme.
You must constantly strive to improve whatever blog content is published, given all of the above variables.

As you work to accomplish these things in your blog content creation efforts, I promise you a greater degree of professional success.

Images: Boston.com, Wikipedia.org, notacrime, Sebastian Bergmann

What to Do if You Liked This Article

If you liked this article, I invite you to subscribe to Visionary Blogging and to check out my VB Pro membership service for blogging professionals.

Also, I’d love it if you shared this article with friends by Twitter, Delicious, email, smoke signal, etc.

Thank you and stay tuned for my next article, which will explain how to promote all the fantastic blog content you’re creating.

What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now in this whole blog content creation process?

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5 Surefire Steps to Better Blog Content

Easton Ellsworth — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:35:30 +0000

Want to make your blog’s articles much more compelling and valuable while saving time and money?

Here’s a five-step method that has worked well for my consulting clients.

Step 1: Envision.
Step 2: Evaluate.
Step 3: Plan.
Step 4: Work.
Step 5: Review.

Let’s get into each step in more detail.

Step 1: Envision your future blog content and its awesomeness.

Just imagine for a minute that you’re Po, the Kung Fu Panda, basking in a sublime vision of your pure awesomeness. Bask in it … ah yes … okay, that’s long enough.

That totally raging awesomeness springs from a single source: your blog’s carefully crafted connection to its target audience.

Consider your target audience – the folks for whom exactly you chose to create your company’s or organization’s blog in the first place. What was the pressing problem or question they had that you had a solution or answer via the blog? And how did you begin to present the content and design of your blog so that they would respond favorably to it?

Now think about your blog as it may become 12 months from now, or perhaps five years from now. What utterly vexing problems will you be solving for your visitors? Picture yourself changing this world a little for the better through your careful rearrangement of electrons that’s represented in the form of a simple blog.

Let the glorious vision fill your hopeful mind before you come down from the lofty clouds for Step 2. That way you’ll be able to withstand the temporary trials your blog will surely face, knowing you’ve got the potential to reach someday, as Po might say, totally insane mastery of your corner of the universe.

Step 2: Evaluate your current blog content in gory detail.

I mean gory. I mean zooming in so close to the skin (yup, that’s human skin in the pic above) that you see every area as rough and craggy, riddled with potential for smoothing out. I mean scouring dozens of aspects of your blog and really insisting on giving it a complete, honest, fair review. And I mean asking other people to take a close look

It’ll get icky at times. You’ll force yourself to admit that that blog post you always thought of as generating “mass amounts of traffic” actually reels in an average of only 27 visits a month. You’ll come to terms with what your blog really is like. You’ll know the reality of your blog, here and now, and what it looks like from every angle, in every light.

How else can you expect to make it what it can one day become?

Step 3: Plan carefully to take your blog from Step 2′s reality to Step 1′s potential.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost

Here’s where you make those promises that will keep you on the straight path to blogging success, regardless of what fascinating things lie deep within the forests you encounter.

This step consists of creating a written plan in which you tell yourself exactly what you will do every hour, day, week, month and/or year in order to advance directly from where your blog is at to the pure awesomeness nirvana that you want for your blog someday. The more detail, the better.

Step 4: Work, work, work like a banshee.

Diligence is so critical to the Visionary Blogging method. This is where so many of us get stuck. You’re either working effectively, working ineffectively or not working at all. The very best bloggers and social media users aren’t always among the most intelligent. But they are always among the most diligent.

So when the going gets tough, be one of the tough who gets going. Refuse to give up on your blog after trying to increase its traffic or build its subscriber lists for just a few days or weeks. Don’t even think about abandoning your hard setup and launch work for at least six months. Give the blog time to germinate and flourish according to the daily water and soil and sunshine you’re giving it.

This is the secret sauce bloggers sometimes hate to taste, but love to remember. Guzzle it. All day. Every day.

Step 5: Review Your Progress Regularly

Look at the spiral staircase image at the top of this article. Think about how it would feel to be forever ascending, always reaching a higher plane. To get higher, you just have to go around and around, up a little bit at a time. You’re always revisiting the same angles, the same walls.

This is why constantly reviewing your progress is the capstone of blog content improvement.

So take a few minutes each day, a half hour a week, an hour or two a month, and maybe a few hours each year to pause and reflect on what you’ve been working on to improve your blog content. That 2% of your time will work wonders for the other 98%.

Your Homework: Do Steps 1-3 Right Now

If you’ve got 10 minutes, you can do a quick and dirty version of this method right away. If you want to get into it more thoroughly, set aside an hour later today or tomorrow. Let us know how it goes and what you discover.

What do you think? Will you try this method once for me?

images: Esparta, mlouis, bfurlong, mcginnly

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13 Ways for Bloggers to Sleep Better

Easton Ellsworth — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:35:57 +0000

I went to bed at 4 AM last night, er, this morning. I’m still a bit bleary.

Why? I was up late working on some things for blog consulting clients.

It’s not fun but that’s what you gotta do sometimes to make sure your blogging efforts yield good fruit.

Here are 13 ideas to help you sleep better (and, I hope, longer) at night knowing your blog is doing what it should.

Keep your blog content churning out regularly. Miss a beat and you’ll lose some winks. Get your posts published or scheduled for publication before you’ve been awake one hour. That way you can bask the rest of the day. I’ve lost more sleep from this one than I can shake a very large stick at.
Set clear goals for your blog in at least the following areas: content, design, community, traffic, subscribers, search presence, social presence, conversion and value. Drill down farther if you like, but at least have long-term (say, 60-month and 12-month) goals and short-term (say, 30-day, 7-day or even daily) goals in these nine key areas. If you don’t know where you want to go, the pointlessness will drive you nuts at night.
Review your goals regularly. Have them continually in your mind’s eye. A goal-oriented blogger is a well-sleeping blogger.
When you tweak or upgrade anything, do a unit check. Otherwise you’ll toss and turn at night with that nagging feeling you forgot something.
When you get ideas for blog posts or static pages, for goodness sakes, write them down. Jot them on an index card you keep in your pocket like me, or write them backwards on your forehead so you can see them in the mirror. Just scratch the muse’s itch whenever it comes around and you’ll find that your muse will let you rest better.
Remind yourself that blog design is a journey, not a destination. It’s an ongoing quest, not a task with a checkbox. So it’s okay to close your eyes and drift away even though a
somewhere is creaking. No blog has a perfect look. If anything, that should excite you and become the stuff of glorious dreams about your blog’s cosmetic future.
Engage with at least one person in your blog community every day. This could be as simple as emailing a quick, heartfelt thank you note to someone who has left a great comment at a blog post of yours. Or mixing your blog with Twitter or with Facebook in one of at least 75 ways to enhance the conversations around your blog that can blossom into trusting relationships. Just do something to interact, or you’ll sleep like Ebenezer Scrooge sans the Christmas cheer.
Watch blog traffic trends more than you watch day-to-day flow. Watch both, sure, but use a telescope more than you use a magnifying glass with your blog’s traffic. That way you can sleep at night after a low traffic day or week, knowing the flow will ultimately continue to increase as long as you are doing things the right way and there are more human beings with the potential to learn about your blog.
Don’t worry how many subscribers you have; focus instead on making them happy campers. When in doubt, resolve to have faith. 10 RSS or email subscribers may be better than 1,000 if the 10 are passionate and the 1,000 are meh. You’ll always sleep more deeply when you’ve approached blog subscribers as though they’re people like you than when you see them only as numbers.
Optimize for good search engine rankings, but optimize for humans first and search second. Computers don’t make you lose sleep. People do.
Spend a little less time promoting your blog on social media and a little more time creating great content at your blog. You’ll sleep like a blog – sorry, like a log – knowing that there’s something to talk about before you start talking about it.
Decide exactly what to consider a successful conversion and don’t go to bed without tracking your blog’s conversion rate. Some blogs have several criteria for successful conversion – getting readers to subscribe, getting visitors to click through to the company website, getting people to buy a product or click an advertisement – but the principle of identifying and tracking conversion rates with the best available tools will always be in vogue. You’ll never have to count sheep at night if you’ve been carefully counting your blog’s conversions throughout the day.
Don’t get superstitious about what constitutes value – or about anything else, for that matter. This post contains a list of 13 things – I’m not triskaidekaphobic – and I also think you shouldn’t worry excessively about or obsess over the question of your blog’s worth and value. Does it have meaning to you? To the people who visit it? Does it make a difference? You can and should pick some measurable metrics (like revenue, number of visits per month, backlinks, etc.) to help you decide how “worth it” your blog really is to you and/or your business or organization. Just don’t lose sleep over it.

I hope these tips help you find more success – and more and better sleep – as a blogger.

What else can we do to get better sleep? What causes you to lose the most sleep over your blog?

image by flattop341

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Special Offer Through July 7: $77 Total Blog Inspection

Easton Ellsworth — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:25:22 +0000

Through Tuesday, July 7, I’m offering my Total Blog Inspection service package for $77 (normally $297).

Within 72 hours of your purchase, you’ll receive:

A complete 130-point appraisal of your blog’s content, design, community, traffic, subscribers, search presence (SEO), social presence, conversion and value
A written report in PDF format with my best tips and recommendations for the improvement of each aspect of your blog, delivered by email
A 10-minute video screencast that lets you watch my computer screen as I visit your blog and give you specific advice to enhance the written report; I’ll send you a private link by email so you can view/download it
A personalized list of recommended tools, websites and resources to help you increase your blog’s success quickly, emailed to you with the written PDF report
A 30-minute phone consultation with me to discuss my in-depth blog review and your blog improvement plans, scheduled at your convenience
30 days of personal support by email/Twitter/IM to answer your questions on how to implement my advice for your blog

If you’re not completely satisfied with the experience, I’ll give you a full refund.

Any questions? Please contact me or comment below.

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Blog Content Improvement: A Struggle of the Heart

Easton Ellsworth — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:31:59 +0000

Have you ever been frustrated by your blog writing? By your inability (as you see it) to create compelling content? By the difficulty of coming up with ways to make your blog’s content more effective for your business or organization?

My friend, I have so been there.

Better Blog Content is a Matter of the Heart

I sang in choirs in high school.

At first I was shy and never wanted my voice to stick out and be heard, so I tried as hard as I could to blend in and disappear in the crowd. I wanted to become a really good singer, but I was always terrified that somebody might hear me practicing. Improvement was a painfully slow process.

Have you ever been in a situation like that?

How did I finally get up the courage to break out of my timid shell and improve my voice and my boldness? By clinging desperately to two things that no amount of fear could destroy: a deep and abiding love for singing, and an insatiable desire to get better at it. As I continued to hold on to those strengths, I was able to eventually earn the opportunity to sing a particularly significant solo in the last choir show of my senior year.

I’ll never forget that moment.

Improving Blog Content Takes Guts

Your blogging is like my singing.

You make a blog more successful by first feeling it, deep in your gut.

It’s that urge to do something bigger and better and different with it, that quiet fire that rattles your bones and won’t let you sleep until your blog finally does what you feel it was meant to do.

Diligence is impossible without desire.

Remember: That which you persist in doing becomes easier for you to do — not because the thing itself becomes easier, but because your ability to do it improves.

So grab your mic. It’s time to warm up.

What’s Your Worst Blog Content Challenge? 10-Second Poll

Please answer the question below.

[polldaddy poll=1712985]

Thanks so much for your response. If you want personal help with your blog content, please check out my consulting services or contact me personally.

The Best Method to Improve Your Blogging Content

I recently laid out these general blog improvement steps at the BlogCatalog blog:

Step 1: Figure out where you are.
Step 2: Decide where you want to go.
Step 3: Decide how to go there.
Step 4: Go there.
Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4.

In my next post, I’ll explain how to follow each step to create more effective, more rewarding content on your blog.

For you, what’s the toughest thing about improving your blog’s content?

photos by kevindooley, laffy4k

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Improve Blog Content: 29-Point Checklist

Easton Ellsworth — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:49:39 +0000

Want to make your blog content better fast?

Here’s a carefully assembled checklist you can use every time you analyze the quality of the words, images and sounds that you publish at your blog.

Blog consultants, social media strategists and anyone who owns or manages a blog should find this useful.

29 Key Aspects of Blog Content

We’ve identified the nine blog improvement types. Now let’s break down blog content evaluation and improvement into 29 key areas:

Number of published articles (posts + pages)
Age of first published article
Age of latest published article
Posts published per month
Comments by blog visitors per month
Trackbacks/pingbacks per month
Words per article
Images/audio/videos per article
Internal links per article
External links per article
Compelling headlines
Descriptive headlines
Concise headlines
Appropriate writing style
Useful content
Remarkable content
Targeted content
Accurate content
Unique content
Viral content
Effective use of multiple media formats
Appropriate anchor text in hyperlinks
Appropriate number of hyperlinks
Relevant hyperlinks
Descriptive use of categories/tags
Concise use of categories/tags
Relevant use of categories/tags
Visible policies
Useful policies

How to Use the Blog Content Checklist

The list is sorted thematically, not by priority. It’s meant to help you move quickly and efficiently through the blog evaluation process. After you go through each element, you can use the Visionary Blogging method to form and execute a solid plan to actually make your blog posts, pages, photos, videos, etc. more effective.

Items 1-10 can be quantified directly; the rest cannot, but are best measured on a sliding qualitative scale.

Please refer to my complete Blog Improvement Checklist for a complete list of blog improvement aspects and advice on how to form a clear plan for improving your blog.

Improving Blogs: Remember These 4 Bits of Advice

You can’t effectively improve what you don’t effectively evaluate.
You can’t effectively evaluate what you don’t effectively measure.
You can’t effectively measure what you don’t accurately see.
Which is why you need to know and use the Visionary Blogging method.

Coming Soon at Visionary Blogging

An overview of blog content improvement (the big picture on how to do it right), plus free tips on how to improve your publishing rhythm.

I will cover each of the 29 aspects listed above right here at VisionaryBlogging.com in the weeks and months to come. Why they matter, how to evaluate and improve them, how they fit into the big picture of your path to online and offline success, etc.

Please subscribe now so you don’t miss the good stuff that’s coming.

Ask a Question on How to Improve Your Blog

Any questions about the 29 elements of blog content improvement? Stuck on a particular point with your own blog? I’m here to help. Leave a comment below or grab me.

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Blog Improvement: Do You Know These 9 Key Areas?

Easton Ellsworth — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:56:40 +0000

Blog improvement is a tree whose trunk is vision.

Emerging from the trunk are nine main branches:

Blog content improvement – Making your articles, photos, podcasts, videos, etc. better at grabbing your audience’s attention and leaving them constantly satisfied yet hungry for more
Blog design improvement – Making your blog look, feel and work better for the people who visit and engage with it
Blog community improvement - Building a more vibrant community around your blog
Blog traffic improvement – Getting more of the right kind of people to discover your blog, and helping them become its greatest supporters
Blog subscribers improvement – Increasing the number and fanaticism of folks who subscribe to your blog’s updates via feeds or email
Blog search engine optimization (SEO) improvement – Strengthening your search presence – that is, getting better rankings in major search engines and moving more people through Google/Yahoo!/Bing/etc. searches to your blog
Blog social media optimization (SMO) improvement – Working to improve your blog’s presence on various social media, social networking and URL sharing websites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
Blog conversion improvement – Moving more blog visitors through the process of becoming customers, ad clickers, or even just avid readers
Blog value / return on investment (ROI) improvement – Making your blog more worth the time, money, sweat, tears, etc. for yourself and for those who come to it

No matter what kind of blog it is, it’s got these nine areas to possibly improve. Trust me on that one.

Why You Should Care About the 9 Areas of Blog Improvement

When you take time on a regular basis to evaluate your blog and look for ways to make it more successful, I want these nine items to run automatically through your mind. Helps you focus, you know?

Whenever I take a close look at a client’s blog, one or two of these branches almost always stand out as needing immediate attention.

The more know about how blog improvement works and how to think about it, the faster you’ll be able to prevent problems and make positive changes to your blog and in your blogging.

You can learn more about the twigs and leaves growing on each branch by using my free Blog Improvement Checklist. I’ve also got an assortment of blog improvement tips.

Coming Soon: Blog Improvement Advice Galore

Tomorrow we’ll start look at the first (and foremost) branch: improving your blog’s content.

Over the next few months we’ll go through each branch in more detail here on the blog. Please subscribe to Visionary Blogging now if you haven’t taken the 15 seconds to do that yet. You’ll love it.

If you want really intense help with one or more aspects of your blog – whether it’s a personal blog, non-profit organization blog or some kind of business blog or professional blog – please let me know. I’d love to help.

Coming very soon, I’ll have a big update to my Iris blog consulting service, Visionary Blogging courses, events and guides. I’m staying busy, no doubt about that!

So … which of the nine branches of blog improvement is the most important? Which one are you struggling with most right now? I’d love to get a comment thread going on this topic.

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How to Destroy Online Marketing Pointlessness

Easton Ellsworth — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:01:08 +0000

Is most of what you’re doing online pointless?

I had the incredible opportunity to join several of my close friends on a group phone call today. We talked about online marketing strategy and the difference between building a blog/website and building a business.

There was a special synergy that brought at least one of the participants to tears (in a good way).

That call got me thinking about the relative pointlessness or meaningfulness of each marketing activity I do online to promote my consulting business.

These three words were pounded into my brain.

**What’s the point?**

Do you always ask that question about every aspect of your Web marketing? I know I don’t. I should, but I’m as guilty as you probably are.

If you can’t honestly think of a point to each marketing effort that clearly addresses your company’s long-term success, should you really keep doing that thing?

What’s the point of what you just spent the last minute/hour/day/week/month/year doing on the Web to promote your business/product/service/event/cause?

What’s the point of each link on your blog/website? What’s the point of your last blog post? What’s the point of all your Twittering?

If you don’t really know, then there’s not much point, is there?

How can you make sure that each online marketing activity you do has a point?

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Rabid Blog Audience Building: 4 Steps You Must Follow

Easton Ellsworth — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:15:12 +0000

Have you ever had trouble getting people to fall in love with your blog?

If you’re wondering how to get an enthusiastic audience to come to your blog over and over, this simple guide is for you.

Rabid means intensely passionate. A rabid fan is worth 100 casual readers. Maybe even 1,000.

Without rabid fans, your blog will fall short of its potential and your business will suffer as a result.

Building a rabid audience is like building a community: it can be hard work, but it’s well worth the effort.

Step 1: Create a mouth-foaming object.

In my Blog Community Building guide, I call this an “object of adoration.” It’s the centerpiece at the dining table. It’s the campfire at the campfire. It’s the glistening bowl of Toasty Oh’s, milk splashing in from the sky, in the middle of the cereal box.

It’s something to gather around and talk about. Something to focus on.

Something people can get rabid about.

These MFOs or OOAs work best when they create a gathering place around you and your products/services.

Step 2: Get lots of toothpicks.

And cut your object in pieces and stick the toothpicks in the pieces and hand them out to everyone. As they walk away chomping, call out, “Tell your friends!” Better yet, say it with a smile as they curiously take your offering from your warm hand.

Step 3: Watch for the foamers.

They’re out there. It’s a scientific fact of nature. Someone who sees what you’ve done, who’s tasted what you’ve concocted, will discover it and experience an epiphany of ecstasy. They’re baking soda and your stuff is vinegar.

Look closely, though. Sometimes the foam bubbles only on the inside.

Step 4: Reward Rabidity.

Rabidity is unbridled excitement.

Scene 1: It’s Christmas morning at 4:13 am and you’re 5 years old and Mommy and Daddy still haven’t woken up. The unspoiled wilderness of unopened joy awaits. You’re not just foaming. You’re frothing like a freshly made root beer float.

Scene 2, Fantasy: By 6:13 in the morning you’ve thundered through every last shred of wrapping. You glance upward plaintively at your loving parents. They snap their fingers and POOF! A brand-new mountain of gifts materializes before your dinner-plate eyes. Rabidity rewarded.

Scene 2, Reality: 10 o’clock came and went and all Mommy and Daddy got you among the shimmering boxes, bows, and bags was undies and socks. Rabidity rejected.

Which Scene 2 would you rather watch?

Which Scene 2 are your rabid blog lovers watching?

Rabidity is easy to reward. Just give them more, more, more.

That’s one of my favorite books to read to the kids. Especially the part where …

See, now you’re curious. If I don’t reward that smidgen of rabidity, I’m rejecting it. There is no middle ground with foamers.

Especially the part where Little Guy’s Daddy catches that baby up and smooches him right on the belly button.

What kid isn’t gonna laugh and beg, “More, More, More?”

That’s It … Lather, Rinse, Repeat

That’s it. Do those four things and you’ve started to build a rabid blog audience.

In coming weeks I’ll share more detail on each of these steps.

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Blog/Social Media Strategy Links: Week 3

Easton Ellsworth — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:21:10 +0000

Welcome to Week 3 of the Visionary Blogging Links series!

Every Friday at Visionary Blogging, I share the best URLs I’ve discovered over the past week that have to do with business blogging or professional blogging in general and blogging/social media strategy in particular (for non-profit organizations, for-profit corporations, entrepreneurs, etc.).

Over time, I’ll add some of the very best links from my Links series to the Resources page (still a bit messy, but I’m working on it!). Bookmark that page and my ever-growing Blog Improvement Tips page for future reference.

You’re welcome to suggest links for this series. Just leave a comment here or contact me directly.

Week 3 Links

How do you tell if your social media consultant is the real deal? by Drew McLellan (@DrewMcLellan) at Drew’s Marketing Minute – Drew shares some great caveats on how to make sure you’re not getting advice from someone who’s clueless about the way social media actually works.
7 Tips on How to Write Sticky, Memorable Blog Posts by Glenn Murray at Problogger – Excellent tips to remember every time you’re about to hit publish – and even when you’re just starting to write.
Perfect Blogs, 404 Errors, and Humanity by Liz Strauss at Successful Blog – Liz points out that a blog, like a person, isn’t supposed to be flawless. You’ll accomplish far more in blogging when you give up insisting on creating only complete, error-free posts.
The 6 Goals of SEO: Choosing the Right Ones for Your Business by Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz – Amazing primer on why you might perform SEO for business reasons and how to choose the right emphasis for your SEO campaign.

Thanks for everyone who created these fantastic articles. Stay tuned for next Friday’s VB Links!

Which link do you like the most?

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Visionary Blogging » Blog Consulting

How to Create Blog Content That Rewards Your Business Forever

Why is the Blog Content Creation Process So Important?

How to Make Sure Your Content Creation Efforts Are Not a Waste of Time

Step 1: Steel Yourself Against Your Fears

Step 2: Choose a Purpose for Your Blog Content that Aligns Well With Your Professional Goals

Step 3: Identify a Target Audience for Your Blog Content by Considering Your Blog’s Purpose and Goals

Step 4: Decide on a Theme for Your Blog Content that Fulfills Your Blogging and Organizational Purpose by Attracting and Satisfying Your Target Audience

Step 5: Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content, Make Content … and Oh Yes Make More Content

Step 6: Improve Your Blog Content Endlessly

Your Homework, Should You Choose To Accept It

Review: What We’ve Covered in This Guide to Blog Content Creation

What to Do if You Liked This Article

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5 Surefire Steps to Better Blog Content

Step 1: Envision your future blog content and its awesomeness.

Step 2: Evaluate your current blog content in gory detail.

Step 3: Plan carefully to take your blog from Step 2′s reality to Step 1′s potential.

Step 4: Work, work, work like a banshee.

Step 5: Review Your Progress Regularly

Your Homework: Do Steps 1-3 Right Now

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Blog Content Improvement: A Struggle of the Heart

Better Blog Content is a Matter of the Heart

Improving Blog Content Takes Guts

What’s Your Worst Blog Content Challenge? 10-Second Poll

The Best Method to Improve Your Blogging Content

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Improve Blog Content: 29-Point Checklist

29 Key Aspects of Blog Content

How to Use the Blog Content Checklist

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Coming Soon at Visionary Blogging

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Blog Improvement: Do You Know These 9 Key Areas?

Why You Should Care About the 9 Areas of Blog Improvement

Coming Soon: Blog Improvement Advice Galore

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How to Destroy Online Marketing Pointlessness

Is most of what you’re doing online pointless?

What’s the point?

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Rabid Blog Audience Building: 4 Steps You Must Follow

Step 1: Create a mouth-foaming object.

Step 2: Get lots of toothpicks.

Step 3: Watch for the foamers.

Step 4: Reward Rabidity.

That’s It … Lather, Rinse, Repeat

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Blog/Social Media Strategy Links: Week 3

Week 3 Links

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**What’s the point?**